


Ginny on prophecies

by mcepl



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Prophecy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:26:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22663204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcepl/pseuds/mcepl
Summary: While writing other Harry-after-DoM-debacle-gets-his-life-together story, I got this piece of conversation, which didn’t fit anywhere. So, I am putting it here just as a separate one-shot. In my original story, they found out that Ginny is in fact a daughter of Lily Potter, Harry’s sister. This story may very well be canonical (Hinny), but I haven’t mentioned anything about their relationship, so it could be either. In the canonical world, it would be just that they were friends before they were more than friends (and Ms Rowling as usual forgot to mention any parts of relationship other than snogging).
Kudos: 8





	Ginny on prophecies

It was hot early afternoon in The Burrow. Weather somehow forgot how it is supposed to behave in England and Sun was making everybody feel like moving to the Southern Italy. So, it happened that everybody was sitting somewhere in the shade and not doing much. Surprisingly, contrary to the previous experience, the result of the Battle of the Department of Mysteries was not Harry lying in the bed while every other was dotting on him, but just the opposite. Hermione was still in the Hospital Wing at Hogwarts and Ron was at St. Mungo for some therapy from the damage brains caused on his hands, so Harry found himself alone with Ginny sitting under the tree with a large pitcher of lemonade.

Ginny used the opportunity to ask a question she wondered since they left the Ministry.

“Harry, there is one thing which we still haven’t fixed. When you told us in the Hospital Wing about that prophecy, I had a lot to tell about it, but it didn’t seem to be right place and time then and there. Could I tell you now?”

She asked him to repeat the exact text of the prophecy couple of times, then she wrote it down, and study the text for longer time. In the end she just slammed the ground with the parchment.

“It really doesn’t make any sense! How can Dumbledore fell for this?”

“What do you mean ‘fell for it’? Do you think there is something wrong with it?”

“Like, everything? OK, I can understand you and Tom, you both grew up among Muggles, so you just don’t know, but Dumbledore? He grew up in the magical family, and he is supposed to be very smart. What’s going on?”

“Could you be little less mysterious and Dumbledoresque?”

“I am sorry, I didn’t mean to. OK, what I meant about growing up in the magical world, is that every magical child is very heavily taught, there are even numerous fairy tales about it, that the only thing you can do with prophecies is to ignore them, because they are useless and misleading.”

“What do you mean?”

“OK, most of so-called prophecies are just swindle and there is absolutely nothing about it.”

“But … Dumbledore was present there and he said that Trelawney was in a trance, she did not know the text of the prophecy herself, her voice changed, he told these are all signs of the true prophecy.”

“Which of course could mean that Dumbledore was wrong. After all, he is not the biggest expert on Divination, is he? Didn’t he tell you himself that his original plan was just to drop the class altogether? How tight spot a complete drunkard and fake as Trelawney has to be in to fake the whole thing just get a warm spot at Hogwarts?

Anyway, even if we accept that this is the true prophecy, it doesn’t say us much anyway, does it? The text is incredibly woolly, and every other word can mean ten different things.

So, let’s see. ‘The power to vanquish the Dark Lord’ … there is an obvious problem, _which_ Dark Lord is meant? There are currently several Dark Lords in various third world countries, does it have to mean Tom Riddle? Also, what does ‘vanquish’ truly means? It doesn’t say ‘kill’ or even ‘destroy’, but ‘vanquish’. Of course, the most obvious explanation is that it has already happened, and this prophecy has been fulfilled, when you vanquished Tom after your parents were killed. Or, if you sat down with Tom and persuaded him to give up his career as a Dark Lord and be just a regular wizard with tendency to collect more power than is healthy, would you vanquish The Dark Lord? If he loses his mind and spends the rest of his life in a lunatic asylum, will the Dark Lord be vanquished? I am not sure, but these interpretations are in my opinion as valid as the need to kill him outright.

‘The one … approaches’ … it doesn’t say ‘is born’ and ‘approaches’ fells to me more gradual, not something sudden as a childbirth. OK, next sentence says ‘born’, but again, what does ‘as the seventh month dies’ mean? The seventh month since when? Day of the prophecy? It was given sometime in November 1980, right? Then the seventh month since November is June, not July. Seventh month since the couple has been married? That would be a lovely scandal, wouldn’t it? Or when I heard ‘the seventh month’ my first thought was different. OK, all three of you, Tom, Dumbledore, and you are blokes, so it is probably a girl thing, but do you know how long an unborn child must be in the mother’s womb to have decent chance of survival? Yes, roughly seven months. Could the prophecy refer to a prematurely born child, born in the end of the seventh month of pregnancy? As good interpretation as any other, isn’t it?”

“Well, Dumbledore talked about this. He said that the prophecy comes to those who can do something about it. So, it is probably not about the Haitian Dark Lord, is it?”

“Well, it very well could be. Shouldn’t for example Dumbledore get up and run to save the nation of Haiti? However, if it was truly about Tom, there is still the mess with dates, I can happily make you five more interpretations which could be applicable before I would have to think too hard.

By the way, if the prophecy is given to the one who should do about it, why is the prophecy given to Dumbledore? And after all, the prophecy should be mostly about you. Why it was revealed to him and not to you, or at least if you have not been born yet, to your parents? Isn’t it just so convenient that Dumbledore is the only person who actually remembers the text of the prophecy?

Or ‘either must die at the hand of the other’ … sounds rather unequivocal, right? Well, what if you decide after your NEWTs to be a Healer, and Tom would die in St. Mungo during the healing treatment executed by you? Wouldn’t he die at your hands?

Or ‘power that the Dark Lord knows not’. I had to suffer the half-an-hour Hermione’s rant about the mess the Hogwarts Library catalogue is two weeks ago, and so I guess I am one of very few pureblood witches who knows what the Dewey Decimal Classification is. I think it is the safe bet that Tom, who grew up in an orphanage and very permanently left the Muggle world when he was eleven, has never heard about it either. What if that ‘power he knows not’ is knowledge of the Muggle libraries, where you will be able to locate necessary information, whereas he could not? Crazy is it? Why it is crazier than the Dumbledore’s love? Or some random Muggle weapon you have heard about and Tom has no clue.”

Ginny was happy to observe that it was the first time in a long time when Harry really laughed thinking about the library catalogues.

“How do you know? I was hiding from the Dudley gang often in the school library, so I heard about Mr Dewey even before I started at Hogwarts. That’s a weird coincidence. Perhaps you found the power which will conquer Tom!”

Ginny face hardened when she heard about Harry's hiding, but she managed to smile in the end at least a bit.

“Can you imagine the Hermione’s face if she found out that managing library defeated Tom?”

Both had to fight their snickers before they were able to continue. However, Harry was not persuaded yet.

“But what would you do with that ‘neither can live while the other survives’ … do I have to be a murderer?”

“Are you alive?”

“What? Yes, the last time I’ve checked.”

“Is Tom alive?”

“I suppose, I haven’t heard otherwise.”

“Surely, you must be mistaken, you cannot be alive. Are you sure you are not an inferi? According to this prophecy one of you must be dead, doesn’t he?”

“What? Well, I suppose sometime in the future we have to fight and then only one will survive the battle.”

“Yes, but that’s you putting there something which isn’t in that prophecy. And are you sure that battle won’t happen in fifty years?

Besides, that murderer thing is complete nonsense. Soldiers kill in the war, and they are not murderers. Would it be vanquishing the Dark Lord, just to put him in the jail? He will die eventually, … what?”

Harry was getting fed up talking about his possible death, and he decided just to change a subject a little bit.

“OK, so the first thing is that the text of the prophecy is crazily ambiguous, and it could mean many other things, than what Dumbledore suggests. I get it, but still this feels kind of highly suggestive.”

Ginny shook her head so hard that her red hair was flying around.

“There is also the second problem, we are missing whole context and meaning of the prophecy.

Let us say, that I will get a very clear and unequivocal prophecy for you. ‘You will fly on a broomstick tomorrow afternoon.’ What’s your reaction?”

“Cool! Looking forward to it!”

“Right, I would think something similar. Now, let’s say you deliver exactly the same text to Hermione as a prophecy for her. What will she think?”

“I see. Something not very nice, because she hates flying, so her flying a broomstick must mean some horrible danger she is trying to save herself from.”

“Exactly. So, we are missing the context, we don’t know whether the flying is in a friendly pick-up game of Quidditch, or whether it is in the middle of a bloody battle, which we will be losing.

And particularly we don’t know the meaning of the text, what does it mean for us. Is the prophecy of a broomstick an encouragement or consolation, or is it a threat?”

“I see. You really have a point here. Why did Ron choose Divination when he knew all along that it is a bogus class?”

“A little secret. There is one and only one reason, why anybody growing up in the magical world chooses Divination. It is a cheap O on your exam. There is absolutely no other reason in the world. And yes, there is also Lavender who thinks that Divination is mysterious and interesting, even though she must know it is completely useless. In fact, she told me she might fancy being a fortune teller, then it can be useful to learn a jargon.”

“Oh.”

“And that is still not everything. Even if you get exact and unambiguous meaning of the prophecy, you have exact knowledge what will happen in the future, still you should ignore the prophecy and live your life without thinking about it.”

“And why is that?”

“Well, either Trelawney is right, and the true prophecy really predicts what will happen in the future. Then whatever you do will not change anything on the result, right?”

It seemed strange to Harry, but logically he cannot find any flaw in her argument, so he just nodded.

“Then why you should try to make this happen anyway. Just relax, enjoy your life, it will happen anyway.”

“That’s weird, but it makes sense. I really don’t have to sweat about it.”

Harry thought a little bit longer.

“Actually, that’s true about general prophecy predicting future, but this is not exactly the case, is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Two things. First, it really doesn’t matter that much, whether the prophecy is objectively true prediction of future or not. It matters at least one of us believe in it, and then we have the self-fulfilling prophecy. Unfortunately, it seems that Tom believes it (and shockingly, Dumbledore apparently as well), and there doesn’t seem to be any way how to persuade him otherwise, so he won’t stop trying to kill me until either he dies or I do. Which is exactly what the prophecy says.

And second, this prophecy doesn’t say ‘Harry will kill Tom.’, but ‘Harry will have power to kill Tom.’, which if it is true and I will choose to ignore it, kind of sucks.”

Ginny listened carefully and then she thought for a moment before replying.

“Yes, but it still doesn’t change anything. First, if you were going to vanquish the Dark Lord, whatever it means, how would you do it?”

“I have no freaking idea, of course! I am sixteen going on seventeen, totally unprepared to face the world. What do you think?”

“And if you were going after Tom, would you do it to fulfil some silly blabber by a silly alcoholic?”

“Of course not, I cannot care less about Trelawney.”

“Right, it would be your saving people thing, right?”

“Yeah, the saving people thing which just killed Sirius.”

Suddenly, they were far away from the careless theoretical chatter about prophecies. Harry blinked a bit, but Ginny decided that the distraction is the best she can do in the situation. She just got hold of his hand and continued.

“Right, so it is exactly the same as if the prophecy never happened?”

“No, because if that nonsense never happened then I would have my parents!”

Harry was obviously falling in the depressive mood, and Ginny was not sure how to help him. She tried once more.

“Don’t you see it! Yes, it was disaster in the past because those two idiots believed it, but now you are free.

I mean, I don’t believe there is anything in the world stopping you from moving to a jungle in the South America. Why not?”

Harry’s eyes almost bulged from his head with his reaction.

“I would never do it! I cannot leave England if I can help it!”

“Right, and why?”

“Because … just because, I would never run away from this war and from my friends, even I am not sure how much help I can be really in sixteen.”

“Exactly, so it has nothing to do with the prophecy, does it?”

“Of course not, I don’t care about that nonsense!”

“And how would you feel if let’s say McGonagall took some Muggle gun and shot Tom, if it wasn’t you to finish him?”

The image of the Professor McGonagall in the combat fatigues (certainly with the tartan colours!) was something which made finally Harry laughing.

“McGonagall with machine gun!”

He just cannot stop. Ginny let him laugh for a moment, but then she repeated her question.

“So, if McGonagall puts Tom six feet under, you wouldn’t have a problem with it?”

“Of course, I couldn’t care less. Let her have fun.”

“That is what I meant. I remember Lucius Malfoy shouting at Bellatrix, that she is not allowed to kill you, that’s only for Tom to do. You are doing already much better than Tom in this department, I think.”

Harry froze and watched her surprised.

“You are right. That’s true. He really does believe that nonsense, doesn’t he?”

Harry then became rather pensive and under silent mutual agreement they changed the subject to Quidditch.


End file.
